Apple Vs. Adobe Fight Will Fracture The Web

There's a big fight happening right now: Apple Vs. Adobe
Round 1: Apple don't allow Flash in their portable browsers
Round 2: Adobe get Flash CS5 (released this week) to build AppStore apps directly
Round 3: Apple tighten the AppStore acceptance criteria to almost explicitely prevent Flash-originated apps
Round 4: Adobe gets the arse and gets Flash CS5 to build (albeit basic) direct to HTML5 Canvas

Now I am an evangelist for Apple products (because nothing touches a MacBook Pro as a hacker tool right now) but looks from here very much like Apple being the bully...

This fight is not simply spectator sport - it affects all web-developers. What it means is that we can no longer produce a single content rich (i.e. with interactive animations) site/app that will serve all browsers. Until the masses upgrade to IE9, HTML5 Canvas is just not an option and Flash will not run on Apple portable gear.

What about jQuery - I hear you cry! jQuery (or any raw javascript equivalent thereof) really is the only show in town, but whilst jQuery is great for sliding stuff around, it is way too crude to do much more than animated sliders without a prohibitively expensive (in terms of money/time) amount of JS effort.

These guys power struggle is driving a wedge through the web (and mobile development) for us all. Welcome to the non-standard, multi-build web.

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